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Professional Augmented Reality Browsers for Smartphones guides you through creating your own augmented reality apps for the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and bada platforms, featuring fully workable and downloadable source code. You will learn important techniques through hands–on applications, and you will build on those skills as the book progresses.
Professional Augmented Reality Browsers for Smartphones:
Describes how to use the latitude/longitude coordinate system to build location–aware solutions and tells where to get POIs for your own augmented reality applications
Details the leading augmented reality platforms and highlights the best applications
Covers development for the leading augmented reality browser platforms: Wikitude, Layar, and junaio
Shows how to build cross–platform location–aware content (Android, iPhone, Symbian, and bada) to display POIs directly in camera view
Includes tutorials for building 2D and 3D content, storing content in databases, and triggering actions when users reach specific locations
wrox.com
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Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real–world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.
From the Back Cover
Professional Augmented Reality Browsers for Smartphones guides you through creating your own augmented reality apps for the iPhone, Android, Symbian, and bada platforms, featuring fully workable and downloadable source code. You will learn important techniques through hands–on applications, and you will build on those skills as the book progresses.
Professional Augmented Reality Browsers for Smartphones:
Describes how to use the latitude/longitude coordinate system to build location–aware solutions and tells where to get POIs for your own augmented reality applications
Details the leading augmented reality platforms and highlights the best applications
Covers development for the leading augmented reality browser platforms: Wikitude, Layar, and junaio
Shows how to build cross–platform location–aware content (Android, iPhone, Symbian, and bada) to display POIs directly in camera view
Includes tutorials for building 2D and 3D content, storing content in databases, and triggering actions when users reach specific locations
wrox.com
Programmer Forums
Join our Programmer to Programmer forums to ask and answer programming questions about this book, join discussions on the hottest topics in the industry, and connect with fellow programmers from around the world.
Code Downloads
Take advantage of free code samples from this book, as well as code samples from hundreds of other books, all ready to use.
Read More
Find articles, ebooks, sample chapters, and tables of contents for hundreds of books, and more reference resources on programming topics that matter to you.
Wrox Professional guides are planned and written by working programmers to meet the real–world needs of programmers, developers, and IT professionals. Focused and relevant, they address the issues technology professionals face every day. They provide examples, practical solutions, and expert education in new technologies, all designed to help programmers do a better job.
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*access to a publicly visible web server
*ability to create a MySQL DB and host PHP files on the web server
*a smart phone to test the AR content
Also, you should have:
*A PHP and/or XML editor
*Google Earth
Page xxv (and on to xxvi) also request that the user inform the author/publisher of errata, if found (which at least 1 reviewer said exist). I appreciate this because, as mentioned, if you are trying to learn something and are looking at source code as an example and something is wrong in that example, it is going to be hard to figure out what is going on.
As it says on the cover, the author focuses on three existing AR platforms that are primarily about providing you with a set of tools to build "apps" on the respective platforms that tie in to Points of Interest (POIs). The author does a great job of giving you an overview of the "state" of AR and goes into the different platforms in order of complexity and features.
He starts with Wikitude since it's the simplest (no programming experience required) though it's also pretty limited. Layar is next (programming optional) and ends with junaio (you'll have to get your hands dirty). As a side note, these platforms are just that and mean that anything you build for one, is largely staying on their platform. In other words, you aren't going to be publishing your app on the Apple App Store. You're publishing them on Wikitude, Layar or junaio. Each has an app for iPhone and Android that anyone can install for free. Your app will appear on the respective platform's list of available AR apps, though. And, while there are some commonalities (like the KML supported by Layar and junaio), it's generally going to involve some work (not tons) to port your app over to another platform.
He covers the gamut from basic POIs with information (say, historical information on the location) to 3-D models tied to locations that can be used as landmarks and the like.
The disappointing part for me is that's as far as it goes. If your app is all about layering basic content on POIs around town, then you're going to be all set with this book. If you want to do something more advanced (say location-based app that overlays an interface on the camera image so you can play space invaders "on" that location--I'm just making this stuff up as I go so bear with me here), you may not get as much out of this book.
The only downside to the book (for everyone in general) is it contains the usual (seemingly required) typos and skimpy information for the code samples. It's not pervasive but it's there. For example, there was one code example using XML that had a spare angled bracket. If you know XML, you'll know it's the most sensitive to odd characters of all "languages". For someone who's not used to XML and not paying attention, typing that example in character for character, you'll get an error that you'll have no idea how to fix. Plus, there are places where the author uses placeholders (granted they look like this: <servername> in the middle of some PHP code so if you're familiar with PHP you'll know it's not PHP) but doesn't always tell you that they're there and what they mean. Again, for a programmer already familiar with PHP, it won't be a problem. For someone who's not (and who's relying on the code examples to work right if they just copy it), it'll be a frustrating exercise. For all the programming books I've read, it's not that bad since ALL of the books I've ever read (and I've read a TON) always had some typos in the code examples (leading to a lot of frustrating exercises).
All in all, it's a great book if you're truly interested in AR specific to POIs and aren't looking for anything fancier (custom applications, etc.). You can technically be up and running with a simple POI-based AR app in minutes. If you've got the content, you're all set. This book's definitely for you and the price really isn't bad at all.
But, if you're looking to build some new cutting-edge location-based app that does something no one else has done (isn't every app?), then you'll only get something out of the introductory chapters--a relatively expensive purchase.
This book is a fantastic guide if all you want to do is add POI (point of interest) overlays to location-based apps-- enhancements that take advantage of your current location, the phone's accelerometer (pitch and camera orientation) and magnetometer (direction you're facing). Using location data, you can overlay text and icons on the phone's screen and fetch POI data from places like Wikipedia, Flickr or Youtube for pictures and videos shot near your current location. You can get through about half of the book without any programming knowledge at all. You just need a working knowledge of XML. This second half of the book requires that you know some intermediate PHP and SQL. If you don't know either that well, you can still follow along by copying the examples and changing the values until you get the hang of it. The book uses open-source tools like PhpMyAdmin and MySQL.
POI apps are fine and dandy, but I think many readers are more interested in natural feature tracking and visual search: the ability to point your camera at an object, have it recognize what it is (visual search) and once it recognizes the object, do something fun/interesting/useful with it, like glue a 3D object or illustration to it and track it on the screen. Sadly, this is only 1 chapter in the book and not explained all that well. The book mentions examples like recognizing a CD or DVD cover, but doesn't show you how to do it. Instead, he shows you how to recognize photos of his cat. If you try to track your cat, it won't work, or a photo of his cat from a different angle. If you're looking to do Kinect type of games and apps, or developing apps that let you point your phone at a sign and automatically have it translated as an overlay on the real sign, you will be sorely disappointed. If you want to make an app that recognizes people's dogs and put a party hat over their heads, overlay silly masks on people's faces like in Eyes Wide Shut, you won't learn that here. You also won't learn how to do fancy stuff like Google Goggles, which is mentioned in the intro and can identify wine labels, works of art, and architecture. He also mentions Viewdle, which recognizes faces and overlays their Facebook status on top of people. These are the sorts of applications that I'm really interested in, and sadly will not be developing with this book. This is where you have to pay attention to the book title's in smaller print: Programming for junaio, Layar, and Wikitude. Any image processing and recognition algorithm outside of these apps is beyond the scope of this book. What these 3 browsers can do in this regard is very limited.
In summary, this book is great if you're interested in getting started with location-based tagging. For more advanced AR development, you'll have to turn to other resources. I found many excellent videos and tutorials on Youtube.
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